The ambiguity is put to rest about the resolution of Macross Frontier’s infamous love triangle. This alone is enough to make it one of the moments of the year. But there’s something to be said about how it happened. I’m not talking about the actual plot mechanics, but rather the spectacle of it. The resolution of the triangle all happened during the course of the greatest Macross song ever sung. Yes, greater than Ai oboete imasu ka? You heard me. That song is iconic and obviously I remember love for it. But I say in terms of musical composition, power, and vocal performance, Sayonara no Tsubasa ~ The End of Triangle owns it hands down. You’d think Kanno Yoko won’t ever top Lion, this song makes Lion look like a kitten. VALKYRIAAAAAA~

Every time you doubt they exist a Galactic Fairy dies.
From their bowels they emit their magic~
The center from which a singer gathers power
That folds the very dimensions.

This is farewell to love .
Remember it, remember how the secret
Rose to the surface of thought and straight into the heart
While falling through the Sky,

Breaking the asymmetrical geometry
Of this flimsy little triangle;
Behind which great battles claim their dead.
The Princess and Fairy refuse the summons

Though they disappear from the narrative…
Leaving us with the last fairy standing
Love unreturned,
But we listen to her song.

Dude the netabare album is all that I’ve listened to since I’ve seen the movie with Sayonara topping the play count along. My heart would just skip and I’d get chills all over as Sheryl’s voice fades away from the Aishteru Outro.

I think as an OST, the Netabare album doesn’t work as well as a score for narrative media as say, Cowboy Bebop‘s — which had all these interesting tracks for the right moments. However, in terms of concentrated awesomeness of the big songs, I think this is Kanno Yoko’s greatest work.

Not only is the album’s songcraft and BGM pieces utterly superb (HELL YEAH, finally we got the Wilder theme first heard in yarrr pirates scene of ep 22 and that slightly psychoesque trauma music from Ozma recounting ep 3), the album works as the cap stone for the film and I can’t listen to most of it without vividly reliving the film’s great moments.

It’s really something ment to be listened on its own after seeing the film: which is why they pushed back it’s release date so more people got a chance to see Sayonara.

My favourite songs are (oh crap I love them all) Hoshikira, F Refrain, Sayonara, Kuma Kuma and Houkago Overflow in this order, though I listen to latter two more than former.

If they only had sneaked in Songbird in Sayonara and thus followingly on the OST (not that the Netabare album coincides all that completely with music in film, the BGM tracks in particular being partly collection of tracks going back to tv series and first film) I could say they had all my favourite songs from film era on it barring UniBunny tracks.

I think F Refrain/Diamond Crevasse is the secret weapon of the album that makes it required standalone listen because F Refrain is the final word on MacF and Ranka while Diamond Crevasse is the final word on Sheryl we never hear in film. The changed final lyric to DC “I’m not alone anymore” always touches me/makes me oddly happy yet sad but F Refrain is FOUNTAIN OF TEARS provoker for me.

If I somehow make it past the orchestral refrain of Diamond Crevasse’s main melody the saddest, loneliest Ai Oboete Imasuka? ever always gets me. I would’ve loved to hear full arrangement of the song in that style, it’s painful and I love it for that.

I really believe that Ranka’s discography wins out in the end. I really do. This film gave her the kind of range she needed — Houkago Overflow (oh god) will never be Obelisk, but for Ranka and because it’s Ranka it is to me, the better track.

Sheryl never really fits the wistful Yoko Kanno balads that really got started in Escaflowne. Ranka is perfect for this. With all due respect to the amazing Sakamoto Maaya, I think Mamegu’s Ranka songs are better than yours.

I don’t think it was coincidence they cast Maaya as Ranka’s mother because the number of parallels between her and Megumi’s debuts are numerous 🙂

I really dig Kindan no Elixir too (in fact it would’ve been next on the list if I hadn’t cut it on Houkago, as I said I love them all…if I had to name a weak track it would be Get it On but even it has that LAAA LA LAAAA LAA LA LAAAAAAA chorus that is catchy as hell) but in my opinion Kanno/May’n collaboration peaked on Universal Bunny which is in my opinion the best “anime related album” ever (it’s not OST or anything so not sure what to call it), roll over Sharon Apple. With Megumi the perfect synergy got reached on cosmic cuune and netabare.

In the end if I were forced to name my absolute favourite MF songs the list *would* lean in Ranka’s favour but overall I find discographies of both idols awesome.

If there’s one regret I have it would be lack of Ranka equivalent of UniBunny. I know many complained when CMRanka came out (Sheryl got a proper mini-album while Ranka got ED song and CM ditties lolfail) but it didn’t bother me because I figured for second film they’d reverse ordeal by putting out Ranka’s debut CD and then later ED song maxisingle with Sheryl’s credits roll song and other songs she performed as b-tracks. Of course what we got is ultimately, I think, superior scenario and it’s clear they had to release Netabare album like it was but still, the difference in number of songs between two and lack of distinct Ranka CD is regrettable to me.

All they’d needed to do was to change the script for first film liiittle bit by letting Ranka perform her first street live, give her 2-3 songs for that and Sou Da Yo as ending and wham, CMRanka would’ve had 4 proper songs and bunch of CM ditties. Since Netabare favoured Ranka songs over Sheryl (and cosmic cuune has 2 solo songs for both) it means in this scenario the two would’ve balanced out much better.

But it’s too late now. Oh well.

note: Yoko Kanno is writing (presumably one) song for Megumi’s second album coming out next March. If it continues on the road showed by Songbird and Hoshikira (and latter was song Kanno wrote more for Megumi than for Ranka!) I can’t wait to hear it. 😀

LOL I love Get it On, and find Kindan no Elixir the weakest, which like you isn’t saying much because WE LOVE THEM ALL.

Same, I love both discographies, but as for individual tracks Ranka’s is better. Sheryl wins the duets though. Ranka makes the duets work with her balance, but the amazing power comes from Sheryl. End of the Triangle is no different. Probably my favorite Ranka parts in the duets (besides obviously What ‘Bout My Star) is her doing the Ai Oboete Imasu Ka? parts in the Nyan Nyan Service Medley.

I don’t know, I think esp. on Sayonara no Tsubasa Megumi’s vocals carried considerable power too (for example the beginning of the song and her opening verses) and there were many times when both voices blurred beautifully and awesomely. I don’t think Ranka played a second violin there, though of course the most powerful moments (AISHITEEEEEEEERUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU) came from Sheryl naturally enough. So while more power came from Sheryl I don’t think it all came from her in the least. Then again Sheryl dominance in this regard on duets is not something that can be helped, May’n is power vocalist after all and on CDs it’s only so far they can let Megumi go in her Ranka voice (Megumi has some really powerful live versions of Lion sung in her real voice that do not feel at all pathetic next to May’ns ludicruously strong voice but studio recordings….eh). Which is partly why I can’t wait to hear how Kanno song written for Megumi herself will sound. No need for “character mode” anymore. It’ll probably be awesome just like Maaya’s Utsukushii Hito on her last album…

Of course there are duets on which Ranka pretty much is just a backer and most of the time it doesn’t bother me… but one thing I really don’t like about Get It On is that as a duet it’s completely out of balance in Sheryl’s favour (this was grating with the engrish version that came as B-side to Houkago Oveflow in particular) and hardly counts as a duet. I also like the way Ranka phrases song like that and the mix played in film with more Ranka verses is something I would’ve preferred. Alas

While Megumi’s tremendous growth (and I think she was good to begin with) is easier to see partly because her much powered up upper register is easy to see I think May’n has gone nearly just as development as live singer over the 4 years. I don’t really agree with the guy in general (beyond the obvious MS-Mamegu overlaps which partly explain why I love her voice) and I’m not that harsh on May’n by any means (mostly I dig what she does in Budokan live) but I think it was entirely possible to write a review of Budokan concerts back in the day that gave rather positive account for Megumi and harsher one for May’n: http://in-trans.appspot.com/entry/version-f-dot-zero

Cosmic Nyaan should definetly answer question whether May’n was cut out to be power vocalist. The answer is resounding yes.

Most of Sheryl songs are written for power vocalist (think of Obelisk here) and it is undeniable she has unusually powerful voice for a j-pop singer. Even Kanno hras commented on May’n’s unusual power she commands*. Based on what I’ve listened many of her solo singles very much bank on the power she has instead of, uhh, nasally weep? She hasn’t really ever done a “quiet” track and with voice like that I can’t imagine how one would

Northern Cross a capella on theatre audio system was just… man. It really stops you.

*from one time when Kanno was visitor on Macross radio. Megumi’s appeal was in her very beautiful and/or cute (depending on song) voice whereas May’n was towering “like a titan” with her voice… is how she put it, I think. If you ask me that’s very accurate assesment of two.

I still prefer “Ai Oboete Imasu Ka?”, but who am I to question these things? I’m a Gundam devotee, and all our songs sung by actual characters (non theme songs) suck, as do the people who sing them. These songs in Macross on a whole ‘nother level, even the ones I don’t necessarily like. Both the actresses who voice Sheryl and Ranka are very very talented young ladies, but it just doesn’t have that same uumph to me that Minmay had when she sang in “DYRL?”. However, I will not lie that even these Frontier songs I claim to not like as much as some of the older ones are still very powerful, even though I only saw Macross Frontier one time. It was strange that I could be so completely won over by what I originally thought would be the most vanilla of all the shows in the Macross saga. The great songs play no small role in that, I think.

But man, the duet above… is something else: the near-orchestral arrangement, the rock beat, the layered vocals… and holy fuck the Vajra even sang, just like how Basara got the Space Whale to sing with him. It’s just a whole different dimension, this track.

I suppose it was the emotional oomph I was referring to. The situation in Frontier, while still very romantic/sappy/melancholic in all sorts of good ways never seemed as “real” to me as what Hikaru, Minmay and Misa went through. So, objectively speaking, you’re quite right – everything about these new songs is better. For me though, the old song is better specifically because its not as “good” as the newer ones. There’s such a thing as too much production, at least that’s how I look at it.

Here’s a better way to say what I really feel: all my loves have been the sad, tragic kinds, the look-back-and-sigh, saudade, world-weary kinds that make me say “if only.” “Ai Oboete Imasu Ka?” is the kind of love song I have experience with, whereas “The End of Triangle” is far to upbeat and triumphant. I don’t know what a triumphant love “feels” like, so I’m more comfortable opening my old wound, which I think was reflected in Minmay’s song. So there’s my big reveal: I’m an elitist oldfag that got dumped, so that’s why I prefer the older, less-good song.

Well that’s because you were shipping Minmay like I was. If you were shipping Ranka with Alto you’d be bitter/melancholic too.

But I do agree with you that the ending of Space War 1 is a sequence that can’t be topped by Macross Frontier. But see we’re just talking about the songs. As for End of the Triangle being ovetproduced, rubbish. It is badass in terms of production, with each instrument clearly heard if you choose to pay attention to it. The basslines are godly.

The lyrics are pretty much “a love story set against a backdrop of great battles,” aren’t they? It’s close to perfect in that sense. I think the best Gundam could get to this level of “summing up” what the show is all about on a thematic level instead of just some random lovey-dovey lyrics is G-Gundam’s “Trust you Forever.” But that song is nowhere near as good on any level as even the worst Macross songs. Gundam is just not a series with good songs. However, I will tell you that Area 88’s “Kanashimi no Destiny” is MY “End of Triangle”. That song is perfection.

I don’t want to go overboard in making Gundam music seem sucky, or nowhere as good. Gundam has incredible anthems, and these are songs MEN can sing. Fire Bomber has great anthems too, but you got to have Fukuyama’s lungs to pull it off. Macross has no Ai Senshi, no Meguriai, and no MEN OF DESTINY. These are songs no anime or franchise should never feel bad about. These songs are awesome. I listen to Gundam OSTs a great, great deal.

Man, this song is godly. I get the chills every single time I hear it. And every time I hear it it makes me want to want to watch the sequence all over again. The sync was just a perfect match between the music and the animation, compared to DYRL’s contrast with what the animation showed. The violin stuff at the beginning, the short ambient sound part, Ranka and Sheryl singing back and forth, the “aishiteru”s….man. And giving the last “aishiteru” to Sheryl was gold. This song isn’t just the greatest Macross song ever, this song is Macross. I don’t know how Yoko Kanno’ll top this.

That said, speaking about Sheryl’s goodbye, it was a bit sad how things worked out in the end (still better than the TV series’s resolution-less ending though), but the credits song, (Shudista b?) made up for it.

What you said. It does work as a song that represents Macross as a whole given how it remembers love for Basara (Dynamite 7). Ai oboete imasu ka represents Macross at it was, this song is the now. Glorious.

Ai oboete imasu ka? will always be the song that best represents Macross as a whole to me. My personal reason is that it was the first song that transcended time and touched another species to the core. What’s special about the song is that it’s just a simple love song. A simple, plain love song, with simple music, lyrics and vocals that was able to connect humanity with the zentreadi and the protoculture. It’s a song that represents one of the basic elements in all of Macross. That love and music is ever present and much needed in times of peace and in times of war. Love will always be remembered. Bitter or sweet, it connects us all.
Sayonara no Tsubasa is a wonderfull song and an excellent way to end the triangle, but it still remains a song of Frontier. The song of Sheryl and Ranka to accompany Alto’s dance in the skies. It’s probably the best song Kanno has composed for Macross, but it will never reach the hight of Ai oboete imasu ka. The song is iconic to me, just as Minmay is the ultimate icon in Macross. Singers, who made an impact in the Macross universe may come and go, but Minmay was in the right place at the right time to become the greatest.

That said, the song and the scenes in the movie are on my 2011 Top list aswell. The way it plaid out was fantastic, to bad they couldn’t end the series on a similar note back in the day.

First of all, you won’t find a bigger Minmay fan than me. But having said so,

Ai oboete imasu ka? may have reached a couple of thousand Zentraedi hearts but during the climactic battle its impact was that of shock value. While the Zentraedi were shocked, the allied forces shot them to death.

Also, during the actual battle, Love Drifts was the song delivered… part of a whole medley. Ai oboete imasu ka? Was popularized a few decades after the Space War and yet attributed to Minmay. The DYRL? movie was shown 30 years after the event. It’s a propaganda piece, that is also a Minmay retrospective.

So using your logic, Watashi no Kare Wa no Pairotto, 0-G Love, or Shaopaillon can be the song you’re talking about.

I’ve watched a lot of anime; certainly not as much as some of us here, but still a fair sum. Most of it comes and goes. Macross as a whole is hardwired into my brain. This song along with the entirety of the movie is one of the best reasons why.

This song made the whole thing for me. I’ve seen epic battles before; I’ve seen glorious Macross dogfights before; I’ve heard and seen beautiful songs performed before. Very rarely does everything coalesce into something of this scale. It certainly helps that my 2D waifu was singing.
(If ever my 3D significant other sees this, she’d give me quite the dirty look, hehe.)

Ai oboete imasu ka? is not my all time favourite Macross song (that would be Voices from Mplus) but it remains in my book the seminal, classic, greatest Macross song that epitomizes the franchise. Sayonara no Tsubasa while a fantastic musical conclusion to Frontier is a bit…how should I say it…too busy, with a lot of notes. Just try humming it and you’ll run out of breath after a couple of minutes. It still kicks ass in some many ways and the Aishiteru outro is epic, but I wonder if it’ll stand the test of time. We’ll just have to wait a decade or so to find out 🙂

Well, the 9th Symphony isn’t very sing-able either and has way more notes than say, the 5th. Doesn’t make it less iconic.

Epitomizes is no longer correct, because it only represents the old. There’s nothing about it that anticipates the awesomeness of Basara. The End of the Triangle does, and contains so much possibility that Macross music can go in any direction and be represented well by this song. Timelessness depends on many factors, such as generations coming into power… becoming majorities, etc. But what remains is that The End of the Triangle is an expansive, layered, powerful track that takes Macross above and beyond what Ai oboete imasu ka? does.

I’m afraid the track in question just doesn’t feel that impressive to my ears but then again one must account for taste. In any case its another great track by Yoko Kanno who must surely at some point run out of great tunes.
Going dark for the next couple of days so just want to avail myself of the opportunity to wish you and all the readers of your blog a happy Xmas.:-)

I prefer Hoshikira over SayoTsuba partly precisely for this reason (musical clarity) but the song got so much power behind it only few compare. Plus the chorus is genuinely unforgettable and utterly terrifying. It desperately needs live version.

Sadly, I can’t think of any single Macross song that encapsulates the franchise for me. Actually, I’ve always been more interested in music’s symbolic role in Macross, rather than following indivivdual Macross-related artists. Today it’s been changing, as my love of SDFM has been leading me to desire to add some Mari Ijima songs to my playlist at long last, but the symbolic value of music in the stories will always be tops over interest in individual performers and their works within Macross.

There’s nothing in Macross I love more than SDFM, so Mari’s catalogue and the OP and ED would be the songs I would choose. However, “Wings of Goodbye” was the Macross work I enjoyed secondmost after a string of disappointments. I’m sure that with further viewings, the music will grow on me even more.

The movie made me love Sheryl, and I was pleased to see that she “won”, primarily for her sake, although I found Alto pretty endearing, too.

It’s easy not to value music beyond its symbolic role especially if Robotech was such a big factor in one’s consumption of the metafranchise, as with my case in the early ’90s. The music I remembered from the ’80s seemed so faint that I was certain that Robotech was the definitive Macross story until I watched Macross Plus and it all started coming back to me.

The repeated (and repeated) viewings immersed me in the music, and I really dove deep into it, from the BGM of SDFM and DYRL to my beloved Fire Bomber and into Frontier. Once you saturated yourself with both holistic and narrative elements, you start paying attention to other things, and it was music with me (and of course the mecha).

I suppose that’s true–Minmay’s music in Robotech is notoriously terrible, and focusing on the symbolic role might be a way to ease the ear-busting nature. I know that, somehow, when I understood what the dubbed music represented, the fact that it was bad didn’t seem quite so awful. For some reason, the fact that Minmay’s dubbed singing was bad never took even one sliver away from the narrative power.

Another problem is that I largely don’t find J-Pop to my tastes outside of things. One can overcome one’s individual tastes when the music is linked to something positive, but it might play a role in how invested in get in Macross’ music. A strange contradiction is that the Macross works I dislike the most often have the music I notice first. The title song for “Do You Remember Love?” is great even though I dislike the movie and find little emotional investment in that scene, and “Seventh Moon” is pretty catchy. However, in both cases, their negative associations have been eroding my interest, even as I swing more towards SDFM’s music.

I’ve also been fond of Sharon Apple’s music, which is better sustained because of my greater ambivalence towards Macross Plus that the decisive dislike of others.

Sharon Apple’s music is about as far as you can get from the norm of Macross music. The only song from her oevure even remotely close to J-Pop is “Fly High”, and that’s due to the Engrish lyrics. Sharon’s music is wonderful becuase it sounds as close to (as I can imagine) the pop music of an intergalactic future civilisation WOULD sound: all alien rythms, garbled mutli-lingual lyrics and a decidedly trans-human feel.

Regular Macross songs sound like contemporary Japanese pop to me; Macross Plus’ songs are pure futurism, the fusion of the Human with the Alien into a single Protoculture. Very fitting for the Macross Universe, and exactly what Yoko Kanno was going for.

Sharon Apple went way out there, and Yoko Kanno continued in this vein when she did work for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (amazing work)… but she did realize that this doesn’t quite work as popular music. Thus, she brought everything together when she worked with Sheryl and Ranka, taking Sharon’s light show with her along with Minmay’s cute ditties, and Fire Bomber’s awesomeness.

Kawamori and Kanno co-penned the lyrics and supposedly it crystallizes the main themes of the work, just deepeing the impression Sayonara is as far as the franchise can go in the “musical” direction.

They’re terrific lyrics too, only bested (in my eyes) by Hoshikira and esp. Songbird (which was penned by famous poet, lyricist and essayist Giniro Natsuo and oh boy it shows) in my eyes:

Wind rocks the horizon
Is the flame still burning?
Shaking, I stand at the entrance to the world
I can’t die until my feelings have reached you

Those wings are Valkyria
In front of the injured soldier (Valkyria)
A vision of his lover swoops down
Her spirit crosses a rainbow bridge in order to point the way
Valkyria
Even if we go against our destiny (Valkyria)
Even if we’re torn apart by tears (Valkyria)
When dawn breaks there is no life that does not shine
I love you
Clad in armour made of light, soaring across the sky
Valkyria – the wings of goodbye

What are those eyes looking for now?
Who are those lips calling out to?
I kept singing, believing that we would be able to meet
Until I’ve atoned for everything, till I’ve given everything

Those wings are a Valkyria
In front of the collapsed soldier (Valkyria)
A vision of his lover swoops down
So that you don’t melt into the blue of the sky
Valkyria
This patched up sorrow (Valkyria)
That I picked up in both hands is reality
I head east clutching seeds that will raise pride from these ruins

Beloved, beloved and perfectly clear
Valkyria

Her spirit crosses a rainbow bridge in order to point the way

(Running through azure
The storm of time howling in my face
I will always love you, love you)

Valkyria x 2

Exhale, now let’s go and choose our future

Valkyria
I meet with the wind (Valkyria)
And will one day see the wind off (Valkyria)
When dawn breaks there is no life that does not shine
I’m alive
Wrapped in armour of light soaring through the sky
Valkyria- the wings of good bye